Coconut: The Fruit Named After a Face

A coconut is the fruit of *Cocos nucifera*, a palm found across the tropics. Botanically it is a drupe, like a peach, not a nut. The name comes from Portuguese sailors who thought the three pores on the shell made a face: coco meant a grinning skull or bogeyman.

• The fruit of the coconut palm. *Split the coconut with a machete.*
• Its white flesh. *Desiccated coconut in the cake.*
• The liquid inside. *Coconut water is drunk fresh.*

Word forms

How it is used in a sentence

• Grate the coconut into the pan.The flesh, uncountable in cooking.
• Coconuts can float for months and still germinate.How the palm spread across the Pacific.
• Coconut water and coconut milk are not the same thing.A very common shopping mistake.

Water, milk, cream and oil

• Coconut water — the clear liquid inside a young nut, drunk as it is
• Coconut milk — made by soaking and pressing grated flesh
• Coconut cream — the thicker layer that rises on the milk
• Coconut oil — pressed from dried flesh, solid below about 24 degrees
• Copra — the dried flesh itself, traded for oil pressing

From Portuguese and Spanish *coco*, a grinning face or bogeyman, plus English nut. The palm reached almost every tropical coast partly by human carriage and partly because the fruit survives long journeys at sea.